I left this as a comment, but I think I'll get better feedback here where things are a bit slower.

"I do miss being rewarded every level, but the new talents are far more interesting. How do we resolve this? In retrospect, the solution seems incredibly simple: Why didn't they just combine them by giving you standard talent points every level as normal for the generic buffs (+damage, +healing, +crit, +haste, etc), then give you a 'specialization' point every 15 levels that would be used only for the talents in the new talent system?"

It might also be nice to have some passive PvP-centric talents in such a system (+resilience, +power, improved Battle Fatigue, etc). Thoughts, ya'll?

Seems reasonable. I never felt the 'gimmies' (the talents anyone who wasn't utterly atrocious would pick anyway, the stuff like Poleaxe Spec for any Arms warrior using a 2h axe or that +damage Prot Tier 1 talent every Ret pally ever started out with) made for an engaging gameplay choice to make, but having them as a Diablo-style point-buy system for secondary stats and power amplifiers/alterations might make for a nifty second level of progression level-by-level.

You can't change your name on YouTube. Period. YouTube refuses to offer any means to change your YouTube account name. I'm sure plenty of YouTubers would if they could. As an example, Jesse Cox of the channel OMFGCata is no longer with the OMFG network, nor does he cover the Cataclysm beta, for obvious reasons. So he is, and forever will be known as Wowcrendor.

As for why he doesn't rant about League of Legend's linearity.. it's because it's a completely different genre of game. League of Legends is not an MMO. It's a MOBA. I'm not even sure you thought through that before saying it.

Except people can change their name to their real name instead of what they got now. Not sure how it works for newer accounts but a little while back you would get a prompt asking if you wanted to change your account name to your real name or something like that, could even make it something that isn't your name if you wanted.

And why does it matter if league is a MOBA? Every game can be victim to linearity.

I don't really agree with his opinions but that's because it's opinions. It doesn't make his any more wrong and mine any more right. I can see where he's coming from on most subjects though.

I think the difference was that it wasn't required. Like WOTLK dailies can aid you in getting rep and getting catchup gear for those returning or new to the game. But otherwise not required. You could just do dungeons for rep, and catch up gear could be acquired elsewhere.

Though for me it's a lot of small things in the game.

#1 Game is too easy. Relatively speaking.
#2 Talent system is boring.
#3 Lots of classes and specs that are still imbalanced.
#4 Lore seems to have taken a nose dive.
#5 Harder to find people to play with on dead realms.

Though to be honest they did seem to address a lot of these concerns with patch 5.4. They're certainly trying to balance classes and specs again. Lore seems more interesting with a beating heart of an old god. I'm sure everybody wants to know who's going to be the new Warchief. They're doing something about realm populations with Virtual Realms. The new flex raiding is more difficult then LFR.

Though again, there needs to be a lot of things addressed. Specifically talent system seems too cookie cutter, despite their efforts to avoid this. LFR dungeons need to have different loot, so that people will have incentive to try to get into normal and heroic raids. Like no Tier loot should drop in LFR. Classes really need to be balanced a lot better, and a lot quicker. Both the overpowered and the underpowered. DPS Hybrids in particular need help to differentiate themselves from their healing roles. Shamans and Paladins in particular.

Seems reasonable. I never felt the 'gimmies' (the talents anyone who wasn't utterly atrocious would pick anyway, the stuff like Poleaxe Spec for any Arms warrior using a 2h axe or that +damage Prot Tier 1 talent every Ret pally ever started out with) made for an engaging gameplay choice to make, but having them as a Diablo-style point-buy system for secondary stats and power amplifiers/alterations might make for a nifty second level of progression level-by-level.

I've been thinking it would be cool if we could get some pseudo talent or new glyphs that would just give us more haste, crit, or mastery or make one ability do a little more. It wouldn't change the class but just the feel. Maybe you like to crit more or may you like to cast or hit faster. It would obviously take some balancing and would probably end up having an optimal set up so it probably wouldn't work out in the end. It would be kinda cool to set up a sub class inside of the class kind of like how some specs have have differen't types of weapons they use.

No shit is not the same game, and Im glad it isnt. For a lot of people, its called beeing burned out, then resorting to past memories.

Tbh, the thread is probably going to end like the other 10000 about how much better the previous xpac is, and the current one is awful (yeah this has happened in every single one). Ima go watch me some netflix!

Then why are you talking like it was the same game in your previous post? It isn't. That's the entire problem here. MoP changed way more than it should have without adding anything to the experience.

Well for the life of me I can't see where he's coming from with the dailies thing, while it was true that not so long ago dailies seemed more mandatory, that is far from the case now, hell I've just dinged 2 fresh characters and gotten them to 480+ Ilvl without doing a single daily quest, as for there being not many daily quests in WOTLK, I seem to remember a fair few of them, granted they weren't AS important for progression back then, but they were definately there and I definately still found myself doing dailies I didn't really want to do.

I think he should come back and try end game again now, if he hasn't already, I find it highly unlikely that he has done anything in patch 5.2 or beyond or he wouldn't be complaining with such emphasis on daily quests, at least in my opinion, the system is alot better now than it was.

I'd also like to talk about talents, this might be a subjective thing but I am in complete disgreement that the old system was better, I find myself switching talents now more than ever, varying my gameplay and having different options for different encounters, I love the current system, leveling up and getting an extra 1% strength or something along those lines was not very rewarding at all and I can't see why it was such a big deal to some, there are still things to strive for and motivate you while leveling, not every level are you rewarded now, but there are still very nice tiered talents in the current system, and finally unlocking an extra tier of your talents is a great feeling, I remember getting to the grimoire section of warlock talents and feeling amazing, I had been working towards them for a while and It felt rewarding to finally be able to use them.

All in all, alot of opinions presented in the video, and some of them seem out of date with the current state of WoW, as I said, I think a revisit to end game would be pleasantly surprising for him, they've definately fixed alot of the things people had problems with.

Originally Posted by want my Slimjim

You don't stand next to someone and speak In Spanish in an uncrowded area. Thats not a freedom concept.

He makes completely valid points. People get burnt out after awhile, sounds like all it is. I'm not playing at the moment, got bored with it. I pop in about once a week or so to check in with the guild. I feel like as GM I should do at least that much. I will be back when 5.4 hits I suppose.

Off topic, I love WoWCrendor, he makes me laugh and I feel like he always make's good points and interesting observations. The only thing I have against the guy is the luckydo rap. Don't get me wrong, its amazing. But my boyfriend plays it a lot more than I think is acceptable, it's gotten awkward. If he could make it his ringtone he probably would.

I left this as a comment, but I think I'll get better feedback here where things are a bit slower.

"I do miss being rewarded every level, but the new talents are far more interesting. How do we resolve this? In retrospect, the solution seems incredibly simple: Why didn't they just combine them by giving you standard talent points every level as normal for the generic buffs (+damage, +healing, +crit, +haste, etc), then give you a 'specialization' point every 15 levels that would be used only for the talents in the new talent system?"

It might also be nice to have some passive PvP-centric talents in such a system (+resilience, +power, improved Battle Fatigue, etc).
Thoughts, ya'll?

I think that's a wonderful idea actually. I don't think it would stop WoW's constant bleed of subscribers, but it's one of those little things that might bring a bit of magic back into the game.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: in its current state, WoW is a bit too mechanical. The content is more accessible, and that's great for some folks. But the feeling of adventure has slowly but surely disappeared. We cried for certain things to be more convenient, but we've paid a price I don't think we considered. This video highlights my thoughts almost exactly:

Blizzard faces many challenges in returning the sense of adventure to WoW. They made some valiant attempts in MoP, but there are certain points I feel that they missed.

So recently I've been playing FFXIV: ARR's beta, and while the game is FAR from perfect, I noticed some interesting things as I played it. For one, I made more friends in a handful of beta weekends than I have in WoW in years. Part of this is because I already had an established group of friends in WoW, but I went into FFXIV: ARR with a similar group of pals. I found myself not feeling forced to group to progress my character, but encouraged to do so. It was a good feeling. A feeling I first experienced when WoW launched and MMORPGs began to drift away from forced-grouping and obnoxiously long grinds.

It's really easy for a new game to provide a sense of adventure, but I think there are a few things games can do to nurture it:

1) Give people options, but provide gameplay mechanics that cultivate a good community. Don't force people to group up, but create content that requires not only team-play, but teamwork.

2) Encourage people to explore the world. I think MoP attempted to do so with the various daily quest hubs that were necessary for min/maxing at MoP launch. I think there are better approaches than daily quest hubs though. Branching quest paths, engaging storylines that take the player to many zones, rewarding open world events and options to progress your character other than leveling up your main class.

3) Give players identity. Not just with their class, but with their character. Not everyone needs to be a special snowflake, but character customization and branching progression helps make folks attached to their online persona. I know that this usually results in balance issues, but I feel that it's a cost that is worth it, and a cost that can be minimized by intelligent content design.

Just my 2 cents. WoW is still a great game. I just think Blizzard can make some steps to make WoW the online adventure that we all crave.

Big fan of Crendor since he started getting popular in Wrath, a lot of his videos are hilarious. However to me, it sounded like he just is tired of the game. He seemed to try and construct some ideas that would make the game more like it used to be for the sake of missing the older expansions.

I disagree with him on talents and many other things and he even admitted his bias due to the fact that he missed an old guild which made the game seem better than it might have been. The only thing I can agree with him on is the addition of PvP zones with CRZ but that is incredibly minor.

Not to sound crude but he looks at things from a very casual standpoint. Just my take on things.

WoW was still linear during Vanilla, you just didn't have XXX quest telling you to go see YYY or ZZZ person/hub.

Also, I lost respect for Mr. Cox a LONG time ago.

I really don't feel that classic WoW was a linear experience. Many quests took you across many zones, and each class had unique quests that helped you identify with the class. There were also quite a few options for all level ranges.

I don't agree with Crendor. I subscribed to him a few years back when he was mainly focusing on WoW machinima. I really enjoyed his videos a lot. Now? not anymore. I've unsubscribed from him today because judging from his recent video, I sure know that he won't be getting back to his old focus, which are mainly making WoW videos. And even if it turned out to be the opposite, the videos wouldn't be as good as before.

I'm not saying it's easy to make a WoW machinima, but come on now.. a 1-2min WoW video like every month or so just to satisfy the fans, and the rest are 10-30min, heck sometimes an hour, videos about LoL and that other weird game he plays with Angry Joe. I might be exaggerating, heck I must be, but that's how I honestly feel.

"Those mortal shells that we call bodies, are not ours to keep. The body is a gift of earth that must, one day, be returned from whence it came"

I like Crendor a lot. He is one of the few "WoW people" I subscribe to on YouTube. That being sad, this video really disappointed me for a couple reasons.

I felt like Crendor didn't take much time fleshing out his ideas & opinions before recording that video. Even when I shared some of the same pain points he expressed, I couldn't follow his logic. His arguments for what was wrong with the game were fallacious & often made misleading leaps in their structure and reasoning. He admitted that he shouldn't make any WoW videos for the time being, as he isn't up to date with what's going on. Well, then that begs the question, "Is Crendor's opinion of MoP valid when many of his arguments focused on dated, incomplete knowledge of the expansion?"

Virtua: I think the sense of adventure is there, but it just requires getting into a certain mindset more than it did back in Vanilla when a lot of this stuff was reliant on the player getting at least a little bit in-character as a given. Going through the questlines in Pandaria, I've seen stories both epic and personal in scale. I've seen an empire reborn and fall, I've seen friendships irreversibly broken before the winds of change swept them away from one another before amends could be made, I've seen a young blacksmith's daughter aspire to follow in my footsteps, I've seen the return of the mantid paragons, and spent time among a simple, good-hearted farming community of people who may not be the most sophisticated, or even all that smart in Mudmug's case, but nevertheless don't once hesitate to offer what help and hospitality they can to a bunch of lost and bewildered outlanders. Going through Pandaria very much felt like an adventure; there were trials and tribulations, epic battles, and yes, I've even had a monkey throw shit at me a few times and ook me in the dooker once or twice. It's the moments like that that remind me that while I may be a nigh-unstoppable demigod, nobody's gonna be happy after getting punched in the nads.

The thing about dailies in wrath vs. now is that back then, dailies were new, and (aside from the sons of hodir, for shoulder enchants (which were optional for me because lolz inscription (parenthesis-ception))) were mostly optional. At least that's how i remember them. The only reason i repped up with anyone in wrath was for the achieves/mounts. I never went near the TotC dailies after the intro quests because i realized how long (and pointless) the grind was. And you know what? I wasn't penalizedi n game for skipping them. In MoP, you miss out on an extra 3 shots at loot a week if you don't do dailies, and in order to get introductory epics, you couldn't just grind instances (which i always found more fun than questing) for them, you HAD to have rep to buy the gear. Blizz may have claimed that the wrath model with rep tabbards was double-dipping, but one thing they hadn't considered was that dailies worked well when you had a small amount of time to play and wanted a quick way to earn some rep before you had to log, were grinding rep while waiting on your DPS queue, or for when you were just tired of tanking/healing for morons in LFG. Dailies had a purpose then, and they were optional content that the playerbase appreciated, even if they didn't always utilize them.

Making them mandatory turned them into a chore, and created stress on whether or not you would have time to do all your dailies. If blizzard REALLY wanted to make dailies seem optional again, they'd cut back on the number, and re-implement the daily quest cap.

Talent Trees:

as for the talent trees thing, i agree with him. In BC, you had the option of going 21/30 builds, or 20/31. even though 'cookie cutter' builds were popular, some different builds could be nearly as effective in PvE, and sometimes MORE effective in PvP. were there a lot of filler talents that weren't that exciting? sure. but at least you got that sense of accomplishment every time you earned a talent point, as well as a feeling that you were one step closer to the talent you ACTUALLY wanted, with a little bonus on the side.

In wrath, the model changed with the extended talent trees, but the overall idea was still there, save that the 41 pt talents were simply too good to pass up in favor of a 21 pt talent. When cata changed back to 31 pt talents -but you must invest 31 points in a tree before switching- THAT'S when the reign of cookie-cutter builds came to be, and choice was replaced with the illusion of choice. MoP then scrapped those talent trees, claiming that the trees had -never- been exciting (which imo is a lie), and replaced it with "choose a variation of exactly the same thing!" Now i played a druid for almost my entire wow experience, so perhaps other classes didn't actually have as much choice as druids did, but i know that there were multiple builds for druids with the old model, and that some of the 'boring filler talents' did actually make a difference. i found it fun trying to squeeze every last ounce of efficiency out of those talent points. Now its quite literally "you get to move faster now. do you want to move faster all the time, in small bursts, or small bursts with an added effect but an increased cooldown?" There's pros and cons to each method, i guess, but i preferred the old method, both while levelling and in endgame, where it was fun to theory-craft about how to get the most out of those 41/51/etc. talent points.

Linearity in questing:

not a lot to say here, other than i both agree and disagree. I like that quests are an actual story now, and i like that you progress through the zone and get to see your actions have consequences. That said, i do agree that things feel too structured, and I have yet to level a second character to 90 because i simply get so bored with questing. Especially now that i've seen all the story. The nice thing about older expansions is that if you stopped and chose to level in dungeons instead of quests, there was a point where you could just delete all the green quests and pick up more level-appropriate ones, or just do the easy ones and let the harder (re: more time-consuming) ones rot in your quest log. In Cata and MoP, they cut the exp from dungeon levelling and all but forced players to level through questing, then they refused to give you new quests until you do your old ones- unless you want to travel to a whole new zone and start there.

Some perfect examples of quests i hate and wish i could skip, but thanks to the new questing model, i often can't:
-the apathetic panda you had to roll back to town while killing buzzards that attacked him. The most tedious, boring escort quest i've ever done, and frustrating that you HAD to fight one buzzard at a time, before you could move him along further. Even if i can't take on 6 birds at once, the game should at least let me try and fail.
-pretty much any "gather X from mob corpses" with a drop rate of anything less than 100%, as well as "pick up 20 of 5 different items" quests that waste space in my bags, and that you always find 18,000 of the first four but only 1 or 2 of the fifth.
-any quest with a tendency to become bugged. Need to fight the jade witch in order to proceed through the jade forest? oh, i'm sorry, she's currently not turning hostile due to an aggro bug, or perhaps a phasing bug. guess you're stuck here while people report it and blizzard figures it out. (admittedly, i've rarely run into bugged quests, but when they do happen, it's incredibly frustrating)
-any quest that sends you to the other end of the zone, and expects you to return, even though you know full-well that's the last quest at that particular hub, and all that extra travel time is a complete waste.

LFR:

I actually have no qualms with LFR, other than the fact that it takes away from the mystery of the game. I've raided every raid when it was current with the exception of Naxx40 (no time to play back then), TotC (took a short break from WoW during that time), and (with the exception of LFR modes), the 2nd half of HoF, Terrace, and ToT.

I was in a guild that killed KJ post nerf, but pre-WotLK launch. and it felt amazing being able to invite some of my friends into the cleared instance and show them this amazing instance they'd only seen in videos. Now that everyone can see the content, the mystery is gone, and the victories on normal and heroic feel a little more shallow. i know it's just a game, and that feeling elitist over accomplishments in game is silly, but seeing Vashj, seeing Illidan, Seeing KJ, Seeing LK for the first time, and knowing the effort that went in to getting there, you really felt like "yes, i'm ready for this. I'm gonna take this fucker down!"

But now that everyone has seen the bosses on LFR, every boss is just "okay, what's this guy do on this mode? let me check my dungeon journal. okay, what does he drop? Oh cool, a trinket. i'm gonna save a bonus roll for this guy."

I'm currently subscribed to WoW, and have been flipping back and forth between cancelling and renewing, but the game is just getting stale to me, and the above reasons are what's "driving me away," so to speak. I only log on nowadays to PvP on my lowbies, and to run LFR to hopefully keep up with the legendary questline. I want to kill garrosh, but past that, i don't know how much longer i'll play.

I love all of his videos he hasn't really stopped playing wow I mean my friend is in his guild and hes on most of the time.

Well just because he is on all the time doesn't mean he is "playing". He has always said that every time he is on, he is "working". He does he lvl up series and he still makes machimina. I mean Unless your friend said he is on most of the time doing dungeons, raids and all that, he is probably on cause he is lvling for his series or just doing stuff for making machinima or just hanging out and chatting or what not.

I really don't feel that classic WoW was a linear experience. Many quests took you across many zones, and each class had unique quests that helped you identify with the class. There were also quite a few options for all level ranges.

You'd be hard pressed to find a more linear game then Vanilla. Your only choices in leveling was between zones and the endgame came down to 2 very repetitive forms of play that stopped only the most hardcore due to attrition.

Linearity is being circle jerked a lot lately, so lets look at it like this. Whatever choices you had (which you didn't) was so trivial due to the fact that it was fucking boring. I don't care about choice if I am having fun doing something. Leveling Pre-Wrath and Cata was just slogging through fetch quests with boring and similar results.